Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic data gathered with deported migrants in Anglophone Cameroon, this contribution will explain why the physical return of migrants from Europe has little impact on the migratory aspirations of people within a context of departure.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will focus on the explanations that people in a context of emigration give to the causes of deportation. By embedding these explanations into their socio-cultural context, this paper sheds light onto alternative perceptions of dynamics between involuntary returns and justice. In view of the dominant view that high deportation rates are likely to discourage young people from wanting to migrate, I relate understandings of deportation in Anglophone Cameroon to normative assumptions within migration policy in Western Europe. In doing so, I draw on ethnographic material and life stories of deported migrants gathered in the course of one and a half years of fieldwork in Anglophone Cameroon.

Policy makers assume that higher deportation rates would discourage undocumented migration because they assume that illegality is a relatively immediate cause of deportation. This presentation argues that deportations do not so much flow out of the condition of illegality, but - inversely - feed into belief systems surrounding the notions of legality and illegality. The question as to why aspiring migrants aspire to migrate in the face of the danger of deportation stems from, and even feeds into, a belief that attributes a quasi-automatic power to law. Through a critical analysis of narratives that refer to bad luck, laziness and bad behaviour, this presentation locates illegality as a precondition and not a direct cause of forced return. By ethnographically exploring understandings of deportation in Cameroon, I thus seek to unravel the legal consciousness that drives migration policies in countries of arrival (Silbey 2005).